Geotagged Tweets After Zimmerman Acquittal Show Southern Support for #JusticeForTrayvon

Twitter exploded following George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, with many tweets riffing on the idea that “Florida’s justice system is messed up” or highlighting the history and racial tensions of the American south. But data released today by the academic research collective Floating Sheep shows the South was far more vociferous in tweeting against the verdict and seeking #JusticeForTrayvon.

Floating Sheep used its proprietary Dolly system to examine 27,863 tweets referencing “not guilty” and 6,614 tweets referencing “JusticeForTrayvon” — a popular hashtag throughout the Zimmerman case — sent between July 1 and July 15. Geo-data revealed the bulk of tweets supporting the slain 17-year-old came from Southern states. The analysis also found relatively little Twitter activity about the case in large cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York — a surprising outcome, considering the protests seen in those areas following Saturday’s verdict.

“If anything, the outpouring of tweets throughout the South in support of the Martin family and in favor of more sensible and equitable justice system serves to destabilize the common narrative that the South is unitary, coherent region populated by those clinging to 19th-century racial mores,” the researchers wrote in a blog post accompanying the release of the data.

As the organization has done with previous Twitter analysis — like, say, its research into the #StandWithWendy hashtag popular after Texas Sen. Wendy Davis filibustered state legislation that would have limited access to abortions — Floating Sheep normalized the data to ensure it didn’t simply reflect higher concentrations of people. Using a process called “hexagonal binning” the researchers analyzed data based on a relative measure of tweeting activity and population.

“More simply,” they wrote, “this allows us to compare the relative level of Twitter activity in any particular location, rather than relying on raw counts which are biased by population density.”

Zimmerman faced second-degree murder and manslaughter charges in the killing, which followed an altercation in February 2012 in Sanford, Florida. Zimmerman claimed he acted in self-defense. People took to social media throughout the trial, but especially after Saturday’s verdict. Floating Sheep examined “not guilty” tweets, which are largely a neutral response, as well as “JusticeForTrayvon,” which “explicitly ‘takes sides’ in this debate,” the researchers wrote. Doing so brought the geographic differences in response to the case into a stark contrast. The largest concentration of references to “JusticeForTrayvon” were found in Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Kentucky, while more generic references were found throughout the rest of the nation.

“In short, the hashtag that is more closely associated with protesting the outcome of the court case,” the researchers wrote. “Is more highly concentrated in Southern states.”